Why Rodney King case spurred exec to abandon corporate America; find faith, activism

Mark E. Whitlock Jr. was in a boardroom in downtown Los Angeles helping close a $35 million-dollar real estate deal the day the Rodney King verdict came in.

When the acquittals of four Los Angeles police officers were aounced on the radio, the entire room fell silent and all eyes tued to Whitlock. The then-vice president of sales at Chicago Title Insurance Co.’s national commercial division — the only African American out of at least 20 people there — quietly left the room. He never again retued to his six-figure job.

After witnessing people buing buildings that night near First AME Church in South Los Angeles, “I talked to my wife. ... I said, ‘I can’t go back to corporate America. I have to do more than just make rich people richer. Let’s find a way to help create jobs,’u2009” said Whitlock, who today is executive director of the USC Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement.

King, who was black, was brutally beaten following a high-speed chase by Los Angeles police in Lake View Terrace 25 years ago Thursday in a taped event that stued the nation. Several days of riots erupted following the April 1992 acquittals in which more than 50 people were killed, more than 2,000 were injured and thousands more were arrested. King, who died in 2012, became an unwitting national symbol for police brutality, racial tensions and economic injustice.

“He was a simple man who was used by God to change the lives of millions,” Whitlock, senior pastor of Christ our Redeemer AME Church in Irvine, said Wednesday.

That sentiment was partly echoed by attoey Steven A. Lerman, who represented King and described him as “kind of a simple soul” who was neither an avowed racist nor violent.

“He was a tall, big black man reminiscent of almost a god or idol and to be beaten down by these puny white cops with evil in their hearts, it was a dramatic message,” Lerman said. “That’s why the video (of the beating) had such momentum.”

• PHOTOS: A look back at the Rodney King beating in 1991

Two of the officers were later convicted of violating King’s federal civil rights and were sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison.

In the wake of the 1992 riots, Whitlock worked with the Rev. Cecil Murray of First AME Church to establish FAME Renaissance, the economic development arm of the church founded to create jobs, stimulate small businesses and foster community development in South Los Angeles.

“At the bottom of what took place 25 years ago was the lack of jobs, the lack of opportunity and the lack of hope, which spilled over into buing streets,” Whitlock, who lives in Orange County, said.

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The nonprofit faith-based organization, for which he served as president and executive director and was also known as the FAME Assistance Corp., created some 4,000 jobs through partnerships with such companies as the Disney Corp. It also created a water conservation program with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in which low-flush toilets were installed, a project that employed 46 ex-gang members. As a result, some 400 gang members ended up meeting with church officials and started tuing their lives around, Whitlock said.

“People received jobs, people went to college, graduated from high school and tued away from gangs,” he said.

FAME Renaissance, which partnered with the private and public sector, also created a venture capital fund, commercial loan programs, a home loan program, business training and transportation programs, he said. While working with the nonprofit, Whitlock became trained at First AME Church and ordained as a minister. He began pastoring at the Irvine church in 1998, which grew from a handful of members to 3,300 and is the largest black church in Orange County today, he said.

Whitlock now works with his mentor, Murray, at the USC center, which has trained more than 800 pastors throughout the region in the Murray method and the FAME model.

“You teach a church not just to give a person a fish but teach them how to fish, how to own the ponds from which they fish and understand the public policies that influence the pond,” he said.

King visited First AME Church several times and was told about the initiatives sparked by his beating and the riots years ago. There were many other successful initiatives created in the wake of the 1992 riots, including Operation HOPE, which was founded as the nation’s first nonprofit social investment banking organization, he said.

“Out of the darkness rises the Phoenix, and I think that Phoenix continues to rise in South L.A.,” Whitlock said.

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